The Continuing Story of Philip: An OCPD Case Study

By: Beth McHugh 2015

In the previous article on Philip,
the highly-trained engineer who was locked into the world of obsessive-compulsive
personality disorder, we looked at how the disorder expressed itself
in Philip’s daily work life.

This involved decreased production in the workplace due to Philip’s
inability to delegate, to be part of a team, and most importantly for
Philip, communicate appropriately with those who worked both above him
and those below in the hierarchy of the company who employed him.

Philip wondered why his work colleagues were slow to respond to his
requests, often putting his needs behind those of others who are either
lower in the pecking order, or who have made their requests after Philip’s.
Despite this being a common problem in Philip’s work experience,
because he has a personality disorder, he does not have the skills to
question himself as to whether he could be part of this ongoing communication
problem. Instead, he quietly states that he doesn’t understand
why he cannot get his staff to respond as quickly as he would like.
What Philip doesn’t know is that the people with whom he works
do not take him seriously because he is seemingly disrespectful. His
wife Sara reports the same atmosphere at home.

It then became obvious in therapy that in addition to OCPD, Philip
has a form of high-functioning autism (previoulsy called Asperger’s
under the DSV-IV-TR but now combined with all spectrum disorders). In
short, Philip has a dual diagnosis: OCPD and high-functioning autism.
The latter expresses itself in what looks like a lack of manners, but
in reality Philip does not have the ability to understand normal human
communication and regularly offends his family, friends and work colleagues
by saying inappropriate statements. Philip has a robotic greeting mannerism,
particularly on the phone, which he uses on every occasion regardless
of the person he is speaking to and the nature of the interaction. He
has been trained or has learned this one “greeting phrase”
at some point in his life, but has no idea that it is not appropriate
to use this statement for both business and personal communication.

Meanwhile, things continued to degenerate at work after Philip was
given extra responsibility and a new title. Because of job cuts, Philip’s
workload had increased. Because of his disorder, Philip found it almost
impossible to delegate and, even when he did so, he still had to check
everything was done to his meticulous standards. To deal with this,
Philip had a policy of not answering phone calls unless the caller rang
at least three times. Because of his spectrum disorder, Philip had no
hesitation in revealing this information to people he trusted. He freely
admitted that his view on phone calls was that “if they only ring
once, then it can’t be that important”. This method of “communication”
left Philip’s co-workers frustrated and angry and even less likely
to assist him when he issued orders. Naturally, most of his co-workers
believed Philip to be arrogant and had no idea that he actually had
a mental illness.

Philip had the same attitude to the many emails he received each day.
He would glance at the title and decide whether he would open it or
not. Even opening an email would not guarantee action on the contents.
At one point, one of his colleagues located in another city became so
frustrated by the lack of communication between the two men, which impacted
on the latter’s own work, that he got in his car and drove for
four hours to “sort out the problem”. On his arrival, the
colleague got into Philip’s computer while he was out on site
and proceeded to tag the emails that he had sent to Philip. Within half
an hour, Philip returned to find his colleague, normally an even tempered
man, sitting at his desk angrily stabbing at Philip’s computer.
He told Philip that he had found over 200 unopened emails and that he
was tagging his own emails and wanted them dealt with within 72 hours
or he would go to the general manager. After completing this task, which
took over two hours, the colleague got back in his car and made the
four hour trip back home, hopeful that things would change and his point
was made.

Of course, the colleague had no idea Philip has OCPD but merely thought
he was profoundly incompetent. It says much of Philip’s ability
as an engineer that he was actually able to maintain his job. And because
of his condition, nothing did change.

Philip still refuses to answer calls on the first attempt, he is behind
on his emails, he becomes obsessed with first one project and then another,
finding it hard to actually complete anything, especially on time. His
latest problem is that he has failed to lodge the relevant paperwork
for necessary expansions of the company’s work, a job which should
have been completed six to eight months prior in order to guarantee
government approval and continuity of work. Many in the workforce now
stand idle because of Philip’s failure to see the bigger picture,
which is to keep the company ticking along at a regular pace. Because
of his problem with focus and keeping on task, Philip has now put unwanted
pressure on the company during a time of economic downturn. In fact,
he has put the jobs of staff and contractors on hold and possibly at
risk due to his problems with planing and delegation.

His wife continues to implore Philip to have therapy for their marriage,
but Philip also needs assistance with time and management skills. Unfortunately
no-one at his place of employment recognises the true nature of Philip’s
illness, and his ongoing work performance puts his job in jeopardy.
While little can be done to change Philip’s personality disorder,
he certainly would benefit from structured relaxation and time-management
skills. Philip also needs assistance from a psychologist specializing
in spectrum disorders to improve his interpersonal skills at work, which
would then flow on to his personal life.